The lights in the accommodation block dimmed, as a warning that illumination would cease in five minutes. Everyone began to stand up, stretch, and say their "good night"s to their friends. As we got up, I looked worriedly at Otto. He'd just passed the three day mark since Lucy. And I don't mean her death. She'd had one day of happiness, then boom, headshot. Well, backshot.
"Night, everybody," I said. "I'd rather not be here when everyone is tripping over each other in pitch dark. Happened to me once, and... yeah," I said, refraining from mentioning how much hair I'd lost, how many times I'd been touched by hands that weren't mine.
"Night, Laura."
"Yeah, bye," I said.
"See ya."
"Lock me out again and I'll murder you."
"Sure, Shel. Why don't I just leave the door wide open so everyone can waltz in?"
"Night, Laura."
"Night, Franz."
"I am telling you, my name is Silent Death."
"Fine, then."
I stumbled towards the edge of the room, looking back only after I'd reached the glass elevator. He was still staring at the ceiling. Otto hadn't said anything in at least two hours, including just now. I guessed he'd be like that for awhile, despite what I'd told him.
I watched her die, too, I thought. I was there when she stepped in front of you. I just wasn't fast enough, and she got there first. Of course, no one would ever know.
We were back to the same team we'd had at the beginning of our time here. I stepped inside the room and plopped down on my bed, fighting that feeling again. The other secret I'd kept about Lucy's death. That inside, I would've it had happened, before it did. She'd been a great friend, but that didn't stop me from hating her, in the darkest part of my heart, the part I kept from myself. But that feeling had all but disappeared when she took the bullet.
"... and in case you hadn't noticed, your boyfriend's missing, too."
"He's not my boyfriend!"
I'd blushed.
In the face of Block and Tackle. About a stupid comment, one that meant nothing. But even that had dug up the worst of the pain.
That's when I remembered. If it weren't for Lucy, I wouldn't have made it out of that encounter before the next class.
If it weren't for Lucy, I'd be dead.
Multiple times, in multiple encounters with guards, assassins, mindless thugs.
I told myself the lie I'd come up with for my near-relief at Lucy's death. That she represented everything we didn't. We used anything and everything we had to do the best job we could. She'd avoided using her abilities at all costs. We had to work for every little thing we got in life. She could've opened her mouth at any time, and she could be given the world. Even Otto got the terrible nosebleeds from using his abilities, and they'd put him in a coma twice.
Shelby entered the room, smiling as usual. The recent time she'd been spending with Wing seemed to almost cancel out, emotionally, with the fact that they were one member short. I really was happy for her. She'd been stupid enough to keep her journal on her computer, thinking that not telling me about the fact that she had one would been able to keep me out. In fact, three years ago, when I'd had to use her computer for codebreaking purposes, I'd noticed the little shortcut on her desktop and had been reading her journal ever since. Some of the stuff in there had been pretty nasty, and I sensed that her recent displays of even more teenage-hormonal behavior would force me to stop with the diary spying, unless I really wanted to lose my lunch.
Which I didn't. I loved food. Something I guessed Franz had picked up on, because he'd been talking to me more and more lately. About food. What kind of foods I liked. Really? You like that? So do I. That's my favorite, he'd say, even if I'd been talking about salad.
I guessed the H in HIVE no longer stood for "Higher."
I went to sleep, comforted by the fact that we had Tech first thing in the morning. Then more Driving (a perfect opportunity to get on everyone's nerves even more).
I had been a little worried, for awhile, that we'd leave the island at eighteen not knowing how to start a car. Then, a few months ago, we'd been pleasantly surprised one morning during Tactical Ed. The surprise had only been pleasant until we had to ride with Nigel at the wheel. He was too short to see over the dashboard, and the white van had crashed into a holographic building, causing us to stop too quickly. It was painful.
The next morning, I dashed to the shower. Shelby still had a habit of hogging the bathroom, and I actually wanted to make it to class today.
In Tech, I saw Otto pause at the door, unsure of where to sit.
"Hey!" I called. He looked over. "Come sit over here." He obliged, looking at me with a somewhat quizzical expression. "The Professor said you shouldn't be working with machinery by yourself for the next few days." A lie, but one that made at least a little bit of sense.
"Ah, Mr. Malpense, I see you have returned to your usual seat today," said Professor Pike. Crap, I thought, as my story got flushed down the metaphysical toilet. "In that case, you two may move up if you like," he mentioned to the table behind Otto's temporary former seat.
I watched as the computerized name tags on the desk changed from MALPENSE, O. and DEXTER, L. to FANCHU, W. and TRINITY, S.
At first, I did most of the work, but halfway through the class, Otto broke from his trance and began to actually participate. Our truly awesome gun got taken by the Professor and placed into a box labeled "TO BE DELIVERED TO THE MEGALODON".
In T.E., now called Driver's Ed, we broke up into our groups and sat on the bleachers, waiting for further instructions. I reached for my water bottle, but I realized that I'd forgotten to fill it this morning. I reached over and tapped Shelby on the shoulder.
"Can I borrow some of your water?" I asked, not brave enough to sneak it from the Wraith.
"Sure," she replied, "at your own risk." I looked at her quizzically. "Backwash," she explained.
Odd, I thought. I used her water all the time. I was about to tell her that if she didn't want me to drink it, she could just say so, but then I saw Wing's expression, which spoke volumes. I handed her the water back and sat with Otto.
I am not reading her freaking diary.
"I have a question," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Why'd you want to work with Shelby in Tech a few days ago?"
I got up and sat with Nigel and Franz.
Franz was boasting about his victory over Wing and Shelby the day before, so I went back to Otto, who was staring off into space again. Well, staring at the list of groups with a warning to "Always stay with your squad during exercises!"
They still hadn't taken Lucy's name off.
"I can't stop seeing it. Over and over again," he said, not looking at me.
"She'll never leave your head," I replied. "No matter what you do. To lose the person you care about most in the world. You don't feel like you should even get up in the morning, but you do anyways. People ask you if you're okay, and it almost takes too much strength to lie and say that life will go on. Some people try to tell you that the first few days are the hardest, but they're not. Not really. The hardest are the first few days after it hits you. And it won't hit for a little while."
He looked up from the screen he'd been staring at.
"He saved hundreds of millions of lives, Laura."
"What do I care?"
"You sound like you know this from experience."
"Twice."
I was thinking of Micheal. I hadn't mentioned him in almost four years. The closest I'd ever come was telling Otto about what I'd done. Something I hadn't planned on telling anyone, but it turned out differently.
It hadn't hurt as much as the second time. Almost a year ago, a few days after we'd met Lucy.
"Okay! Get in your groups. Everyone's going today, it's not optional. When you get in, a location will be displayed on the screen. When you arrive, open the vault and go to the location provided. Switch to the next driver. Yes, you will have to use a real map here, made of paper. Suck it up. And try not to smash the cars into the real walls on the edge of the room, Miss Brand."
I suddenly became very interested in tying my shoes.
We made our way to one side of the cavern, where we could enter one of the holographic courses. All of us signed in using the retinal scanner, and walked to one of the white vans that were provided.
"I feel like a rapist," Shelby muttered as she climbed in.
We decided to go in alphabetical order, which meant Franz got to go first, with Nigel as navigator. The going was pretty uneventful, although Franz decided to run over everyone who happened to be wearing yellow, "which is being the ugliest color in the rainbow."
Then it was my turn.
"C'mon, Roadkill!" Shelby exclaimed, shoving me into the driver's seat. "Let's get this over with."
The display read:
#3 VICTORY STREET
COMBINATION: 12-4-19
YOUR PREVIOUS SCORE: 12
I couldn't help it. Something bothered me about the numbers in the address. I thought of the simplest explanation for the number's correlation to something in my head. If twelve equals L, and 4 equals D, and nineteen equals... S. Victory. Vicontessa. Vicontessa Lucia (Dexter) Sinistre. Three days.
What a sick joke.
I glanced at Otto, to see if he'd noticed the correlation. He was looking at my expression, trying to figure out what was wrong.
"It's nothing," I said, hearing the gunshot again in the back of my mind.
We started out slowly, because I was determined to not kill so many people. Fake people, but still. After about three minutes, we'd gone about a kilometer. Everyone was getting irritated already.
"And a one," Shelby began. "A two, a one two three four! I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, every-"
I sped up, then slammed on the brakes.
"Hey! What was that for?" She asked, rubbing her head.
"Shut up, put your seat belt on, and give Wing some personal space," I said, turning around. A beep came from the dashboard.
"You just killed an innocent three-year-old," Otto explained. "Pay attention."
Splashing from the other room. If I'd been paying attention, I would have heard it.
"It's just a hologram," I said bitterly.
If I'd been listening, I would have heard the scream.
"What's going to happen when we go on the road? What would happen if there was an emergency and you had to drive a car?" He replied, making me wince.
"A very wise man once said: 'Your lips were moving, but all I heard was whining noise.' Now shut up navigate." I looked back at Wing to see if he had caught my reference, but he wasn't paying attention. He was watching Shelby, who was picking her teeth with her knife, and Franz was boasting, still, about his "wonderfully awesomeness."
Ten minutes later, we were lost.
"This is the song that never-"
I cut Shelby off by speeding up suddenly, then hitting the breaks again. Another beep came from the dashboard.
"Will you let me drive?" Otto asked, exasperated.
"No. I can do this."
"You are doing a truly awful job. We are lost. Give me the wheel." That stung. Badly.
"Otto," I said slowly. "You have in your lap the map we were provided of the holographic city. If we are lost, it is entirely your fault."
"You're going to get us killed," he said as I ran over another infant. The counter read eight.
Three-year-old Micheal Brand, brother, son, friend, was...
Why now? Why, in the middle of driving practice?
"What is it with you and killing little kids?" He said. He dropped his head into his hands and the lights flickered almost imperceptibly.
I froze up. I kept driving, but my arms didn't move. Nigel, Franz, Shelby, and Wing kept talking to one another. They'd gotten into an argument about something. Not that I noticed.
"Laura?"
I didn't hear.
The counter read twenty-three.
"Laura, wake up. You are DRIVING a CAR. With ME in it. If we crash, I will personally hire Franz to assassinate you."
What a moron.
"I am telling you, my name is Silent Death!" Came a voice from the back seat.
"I am not a moron. Pull over and let me drive." This caught my attention.
"I didn't say you were a moron," I insisted.
"Laura, you've been muttering to yourself for the last ten minutes. You just said 'what a moron."
I looked at him.
"Laura, watch the road."
"What else did I say?" I asked. Please no please no please no...
"Who's Micheal?"
Crap.
I turned around and made sure that everyone else was still preoccupied with their disagreement. Another beep.
"Remember what I did to get in?" I asked.
"Of course I remember," he said. I paused.
"The reason I had to know what she was saying... I had a brother once, his name was Micheal. Once, when I was eleven, I had to babysit him. I thought of it as a perfect opportunity to listen to music. I was grounded, so my computer had been taken away. This was before I had the guts to sneak it out of my parent's room." I kept driving around the block until there was no one left in the area.
"So then what?" He'd been patient for a few minutes, but his curiosity had won out.
"He drowned in the bathtub."
I picked a new block to clear of pedestrians.
"We moved away a few months later. It had been planned awhile before. I didn't tell anyone I had a brother, but one day my friend Mandy came over."
"McTavish?"
"You have a good memory."
"I know," Otto replied, not paying attention to what he was saying.
"Anyways, she saw a family picture in the living room. I told her it was my cousin. She stayed for dinner, and she mentioned the 'cute little boy' in front of my parents. She found out, and the next day I saw her talking to other people, but changing the subject when I came around. People watched me in the hallways. I went home and tried to find out what she was saying, but I only had my computer. So... well, you know the rest."
So the secret was out. Two people had died, and I could've prevented both of them.
"You know, we're not so different, you and I,"